Rick Nester and Alan Knight

  Page County High School is located just 31 miles from Eastern Mennonite University, which was still Eastern Mennonite College when Coach Knight headed there after his graduation 🎓 in 1975.

Knight began his teaching while still at EMC which delayed his earning his degree until the Summer of 1981. Coach wasted no time, heading back to Page County to both teach and coach Volleyball. Due to an unforseen opening, Knight slid into the Head Coaching job with the Lady Panthers Softball program.

Two rather important things to know about the team Knight inherited, first, they won the State Tournament in 1981 and second, they didn’t have a home field to play on. The State Championship game was played on a local little league field.

Knight found immediate success inside the Gym as he guided Page County to four State Championships by the end of the 1980’s. Knight experienced quite the growth spurt while attending College in Harrisonburg. 5’10 and weighing a Buck Forty when he left, Coach returned at 6’3+. Playing competitive Volleyball became part of the process and his knowledge of the game coupled with the ability to teach = Success.

Knight would continue with teaching and Volleyball 🏐 for the better part of four decades before switching to just Softball. Coach returned briefly to lead the VB program a second time before retiring a second time. Knight also stepped up to become the schools Golf Coach for a couple of seasons until a permanent one could be found.

  The 2013-2014 Lady Panthers Softball team finally climbed the Mountain, giving him his fifth State title. One year later, on June 13, 2015 they ran it back by defeating King William for a second straight year.

 

A great deal of life took place inside of those 31 miles and we will take a closer look, but for now, we have an origin story !

Editing Note 📝 – EMC was working on a trimester School year. The winter time was used for Student teaching.

Pre-Game nerves ? Not on our Bench…

   Everyone who writes ✍ a book 📖 takes a moment to dream about the possibility of someone turning it into a movie 🎥. For me, it would be Aaron Sorkin taking a few liberties with the story.

The challenge here is that this particular project has three different starting points. One for Alan Knight, one for Rick Nester and one for myself. Starting point for the Carroll County High School Softball program has to take place at a little diner that sits out on US-58 in between The Hill and Laurel Fork.

In real life, the Crooked Oak plays a sizable role in the day to day life of Rick Nester. The restaurant is where Coach Nester starts many a morning 🌄 with breakfast and its not uncommon for his older brother Paul to be at the same table.

  The end of the year meal following the 2023 season took place at the restaurant, so its a natural place to host the opening scene.

  A vehicle pulls up into a parking spot and out steps 🚶‍♂️ Carroll County High School Principal Chuck Thompson. Robert Duvall is playing the part of Mr. Thompson. Casting nailed this one!

Mr. Thompson is in a bit of a spot as he needed someone to agree to Coach his softball team. The school had found some successful Student Athletes up until this point but the quest for the elusive State Championship was still ongoing.

  Mr. Thompson greets the waitress and chooses a booth ahead of Coach Nester, being played by Ed Harris. Once again, wow 👏 to the casting director !

  

  Rick Nester is a Man’s Man 👨 and Coaches in that same manner. Folks all over Carroll County have a story about Coach Nester and its either full of praise or whatever the complete opposite of praise.

  Mr. Thompson knows that he will have to dig deep into his bag 🎒 of tricks in order to find a way to convince Nester to switch sides, to go from molding young men to doing the same with Ladies.

Nester slides into the booth, greets his longtime friend and Boss. The exchange pleasantries, order breakfast and start THE CONVERSATION that will alter the course of Lady 👩 Cavaliers Softball !

Carroll County High 🏫 officially opened its doors 🚪 during the 1969-1970  school year and as they say, the rest is history.

Fast Forward roughly 40 years and you will find a hard nosed, no nonsense Coach by the name of Rick Nester. Nester graduated from CCHS and returned to coach and teach shortly after.

Nester was known for his aggressive approach and it played well enough when it came to leading the Boys 👦 but one day Principal Chuck Thompson found himself in need of a Softball Coach..

There were more than a few skeptical people on The Hill back then with jokes about CVS running short on mascara from all of the crying 😢 that would take place. Nevertheless, Nester and his partner in Coaching, Jeff Tobler crossed the Boulevard that is US-58 Business, setting up shop at Cavalier Park.

  For this to work, Nester was going to need to run across some tough as Nails 💅 ball players. Low and behold, that is precisely what happened and before you knew it, Carroll County High School joined the ranks of places where folks could call themselves State Champs!

The Seniors on the team in 2015 included  Sydney Childress, Tiffanie Moore, Hannah Dalton and Cheyenne Strickland. This quartet were the ones that met the challenge and led the charge. We will do our best to capture the thought process from each member of this group, including their initial thoughts on playing for Nester and Tobler.

There were 15 Lady 👩 Cavaliers playing Softball in 2015, with five of them being Freshman.

The unanswerable question is what did the initial State Championship for the High School mean to the team, to the school and to the community ?

Four ➕ decades of chasing the Crown 👑 finally ended in 2015. It’s worth noting that a few years later, Marc Motley and Brandi Cochran – Mitchell coached up a group of young Ladies to consecutive Class 3 State Titles. Not only will the Softball title always be first, but unless there’s a sudden influx of people moving into the area, it will remain the sole Class 4 trophy 🏆.

4 Seniors, 3 Juniors, 3 Sophomores and 5 Freshman is the total count. 11 on Varsity the entire season and four late call ups. They banded together and took the Cavaliers to the Mountain ⛰ Top !